Punctuation: numerals and punctuation

In British English the date is usually given in the order day, month, year.

We use full stops in dates. Forward slashes or dashes are also commonly used:

Date of birth: 1.8.1985 (or 1/8/1985 or 1–8–1985)

In American English the day and the month are in a different order so that 8 January 1985 is written as follows:

1–8–1985 (or 1/8/1985 or 1.8.1985)

We don’t usually punctuate weights and measures and references to numbers:

4kg (4 kilograms)10m (10 metres) 5m dollars (5 million dollars)

Commas are used in numbers to indicate units of thousands and millions:

7,980 (seven thousand, nine hundred and eighty)

11,487,562 (eleven million, four hundred and eighty-seven thousand, five hundred and sixty-two)

We use full stops, not commas, to indicate decimal points:

6.5 (six point five)

Not: 6,5

We can punctuate times with full stops or colons:

The shop opens at 9.30. (or 9:30)

Saying email and internet addresses

Spoken English:

When we speak email and web addresses, we say each word separately. To avoid confusion, we sometimes spell out each letter of a word:

Hannah.reeves@lit.com = Hannah dot reeves at l-i-t dot com

miles_hotel.com/home = miles underscore hotel dot com forward slash home

www.theplace.org = www dot theplace (all one word) dot org

Symbols and typographic conventions

. full stop X.X decimal point (2.2: two point two)

, comma * asterisk

? question mark ( ) parentheses (or round brackets)

! exclamation mark [ ] square brackets (or box brackets)

: colon { } curly brackets

; semi-colon ° degrees (40º: forty degrees)

“ ” double quotation marks % per cent

‘ ’ single quotation marks & and (also called ‘ampersand’)

’ apostrophe © copyright

- hyphen < less than

– dash > greater than

+ plus @ at

– minus ✓ tick

× multiplied by (2 × 2: two multiplied by two) X cross

÷ divided by

(6 ÷ 2: six divided by two) X_X underscore (ann_hobbs: ann underscore hobbs)

= equals

/ forward slash \ back slash